Sybase subsidiary iAnywhere today announced a solution that will add secure mobile instant messaging (IM) and presence to its Information Anywhere mobile e-mail platform. IAnywhere's new mobile IM system will ship by the second quarter and will also be available as a standalone offering. Get ready for some mobile IM on your BlackBerry.

Last night at the midtown Manhattan club Arena, T-Mobile hosted members of the tech press, socialites and other sparkling members of NYC's digerati to an ear-shattering launch party for its newest handset. The Teddybears and Twista were in da house. Oh, and so was the Nokia 5300.

I have to admit I'm not 100% looking forward to the addition of voice into Second Life. I agree that it's inevitable and will make the service easier to use. But the text-based chat currently in use in Second Life adds to its charm, and, paradoxically, makes the service seem more real.

"Presence" is one of the hottest ideas in software these days. Being able to see who's online and how they're connected is a necessary piece of functionality for enterprise networks as "real-time collaboration" (what we used to call "instant messaging" before it went corporate) has become the way to be productive. And for big companies, providing presence has been a security and compliance headache. The latest company to offer help is Sybase iAnywhere. Today it announced mobile instant messaging

The new feature, allowing users of the virtual world to talk to each other, is scheduled to go live around May. It will require complex technology to deliver a unique audio stream to each of the thousands of users who log into the world simultaneously.

Predictive modeling isn't a crystal ball, and despite the efforts of Business Objects, Hyperion, Microstrategy and SAS to get predictive modeling into mainstream BI tools, there are many other reasons for its lack of success... Predictive modeling is different from using predictive models... Automating decisions with predictive models is a good idea, especially when those decisions are numerous and each one has a farily low risk of error.

According to The Washington Post, Google this week held a two-day-long pitch fest with nearly 200 federal contractors, engineers, agency employees, and military members eager to learn more about its products. Google has beefed up its sales operations in the Washington, D.C., area in the last year in hopes of capturing more business from military, intelligence, and civil agencies. Several gov

It's not the organized people who need to keep task lists -- it's those of us who are so disorganized that we need some sort of written reminder to keep us on track (and to keep our bosses happy). As a past Outlook user, my inclination is to pair my task list with my calendar. As a current user of Google Calendar, I've been a bit peeved because, with all its advantages, it doesn't have a To Do feature. I'm a lot happier now -- because I found a site with the absurd name of

To learn more about what organizations are doing to tackle attacks and threats we surveyed a group of 300 IT and infosec professionals to find out what their biggest IT security challenges are and what they're doing to defend against today's threats. Download the report to see what they're saying.

Is DevOps helping organizations reduce costs and time-to-market for software releases? What's getting in the way of DevOps adoption? Find out in this InformationWeek and Interop ITX infographic on the state of DevOps in 2017.

Chances are your organization is adopting cloud computing in one way or another -- or in multiple ways. Understanding the skills you need and how cloud affects IT operations and networking will help you adapt.